[rfc] change copyright text to gplv2 or v3

Aaron Bentley aaron.bentley at utoronto.ca
Thu Oct 4 01:34:35 BST 2007


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Martin Pool wrote:
> I'd like to change the standard copyright across Bazaar source files to
> licence them under either the gplv2 or v3, rather than "v2 or later."

I've thought about this myself, and for my own projects, I intend to
continue using "v2 or later".  There's a balance to be struck on both
sides-- on the one hand, I don't want my free code being abused, but on
the other hand, I want it to be *used*.  I'm willing to risk the small
chance that the FSF would release a bad GPL version that would lead to
my code being abused.  By the time the next GPL comes out, I expect such
code will be ancient, anyhow.

You certainly could argue that your proposal doesn't make it impossible
to use Bazaar with GPL4, since Canonical has the copyright, and can
change the license.  But it does lead to additional complications.  What
about old versions of Bazaar?  Would they be retroactively re-licensed?
 What if Canonical becomes unresponsive to the community?

So if it were up to me, I'd leave it the way it is.  But if you want to
make this change, it's okay with me.

Aaron
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